Zug

An artificial rink went up in the Herti district in 1967, and a club formed around it to fill it. EV Zug spent its early years in the lower divisions, signing the Czech forward Ivan Hlinka in 1983 while still a second-tier side, and it took the arrival of Canadian coach Andy Murray to push the team into the top-flight Nationalliga A in 1987. The first title followed in 1998, under another Canadian, Sean Simpson, against HC Davos.

What came after undercut it. Through the 2000s the club drifted, and a 2001 investigation into a so-called "gang of four" veterans left the dressing room and the club's reputation unsettled for years. The recovery has a clear starting point: 2015, when the pharmaceutical entrepreneur and lifelong fan Hans-Peter Strebel took over as president and began putting money into infrastructure, including a training centre known as the Oym, opened in 2020. Norwegian coach Dan Tangnes arrived in 2018 and rebuilt the team's game around a more possession-based, patient style.

The results followed. A second championship came in 2021, twenty-three years after the first, again at the expense of Davos. The third arrived in 2022, and this one carried weight beyond the trophy: Zug beat the ZSC Lions in the final after trailing the series 0–3, the only comeback of its kind in National League history. Leonardo Genoni, signed in goal in 2019, and captain Jan Kovář were central to that run. A Swiss Cup, won in 2019, sits alongside the three league titles.

Zurich lies barely 22 kilometres up the road, and the Lions are the team Zug measures itself against above all others. Games between them are known as the Z-Derby, and the 2022 final gave that rivalry its sharpest edge yet.